Dedicated to helping doctors and their team create custom systems and marketing plans that enable them to have an office that is not only highly productive and fun but one that allows them to consistently exceed patient expectations.

Hygiene Continuing Care Reminders – Summertime is a great time of year and it can also be a busy time of year. We encourage you to remember to take the time to squeeze in your regular dental visit before the summer months fly by. Regular dental visits are so important to your overall health.

Social Media Sites– All month long share family health & wellness tips, community event info, etc. on your office social media pages.

Give-away- Apples – Basket of Apples with a sticker or tag that says: “Our Patients Are Awesome to The Core” or “You’re the Apple of our Eyes”

or

Sunscreen –Give away mini bottles of sunscreen. If you don’t have them imprinted with your office name, simply add a tag to the bottles. May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month

If you are interested in having me help your office create a custom marketing campaign that includes ideas for special offers, office fun, patient give-aways/drawings, community involvement, cross marketing with local businesses and hygiene continuing care/incomplete treatment scripting, please contact me today at bhaydenconsulting@gmail.com

Are you receiving my free dental marketing and practice management ideas every month to your email? If not, PLEASE take a second and follow today or send me your email address and I will send you an invitation to follow. This way, you won’t miss a single idea. Feel free to share my blog with your dental friends.

Now is the time to think seriously about any troubles, concerns and problems that occurred during the year that you do not want to repeat in the new year. What problems would you like to see solved? Take steps to make any needed changes or improvements. For more ideas to get you started visit here: Improve your Office – Make a change!

Also, think about all of the things that worked well and how you can repeat them or even improve upon them in the new year. Celebrate your successes!!

Do not delay, put down on paper all of your thoughts and plans to make 2017 a better year for you and your practice. Do include your team in this plan, ask them what their ideas are to make 2017 a more productive and happier year for all.

Now, here are some Marketing & Practice Management Ideas to help make January your Best Month Ever!

Practice Management Ideas ~

Let’s start with your existing patients active and inactive…

Hygiene Continuing Care & Incomplete Treatment:

Insurance Maximums: Many of your patient’s dental insurance maximums renew on January 1. Phone, email or text your patients with a friendly reminder of their renewed benefits and make a reservation for them to come in for their hygiene visit or incomplete treatment with the doctor.

Inactive Patients:It doesn’t help anyone to have a file cabinet or computer full of inactive patients – Get them on the schedule. January is a great time to send We Miss You Reactivation Letters to your patients. For a sample letter visit this post: Reactivation Letter

Hygiene Patients: Are you pre-appointing hygiene visits? If not, January is a good time to make this a goal for the office. While you have the hygiene patient in the office, schedule their next 3, 4 or 6-month visit. Avoid saying “would you like to schedule your next appointment?” Many will say no. Instead, say this: “Let’s go ahead and schedule your next visit.” Assume they want to schedule their next visit. By the way, your entire team needs to be on board with pre-appointing your patients. It can be done!

National Clean Off Your Desk Day: 9(2nd Monday) Clutter represents indecision. Make a decision to get rid of the clutter! That includes any sticky notes attached to computer monitors, coats/sweaters hanging on the backs of chairs and fast-food drink containers sitting out on the counters.

Fun at Work Day: 27 (Last Friday) You’ll find many ideas here on how to have fun at work.

Next, we have few internal and external marketing ideas, some are educational and some are just for fun. All are presented to exceed your patients expectations, help to create value for better dental health and get people talking about you to their friends, family members, co-workers, and neighbors.

Dental Marketing Ideas

External Marketing to Local Businesses:

Send a coffee truck to local businesses/schools – What a great surprise and welcome treat for many local businesses. Be sure to take pictures that can be shared on your social media sites.

January is Be Kind to Food Servers Month – Visit some local restaurants and present servers with a “We Appreciate You” gift. Gift Ideas: Toothbrush bag, lip balm , pens, etc. All items should be imprinted. Consider a drawing they can enter to win free teeth whitening.

Internal Marketing Ideas

January is National Hot Tea Month –

Educational & Service Opportunity:

Drinking teas such as green tea can be very good for one’s dental health.

Does Tooth Sensitivity hold some of your patient’s back from enjoying their favorite hot beverage? Show them how you can help relieve/eliminate tooth sensitivity. This will give a nice boost to your production too!

If you are interested in having me help your office create a custom “National Hot Tea Month” (or different themed) campaign that includes ideas for special offers, patient give-aways/drawings, community involvement, cross marketing with local businesses and recare/incomplete treatment scripting, please contact me today at bhaydenconsulting@gmail.com

Social Media Post Ideas to Improve Engagement:

Sugar Awareness Week – 16-20

National Motivation and Inspiration Day: 2

Dress Up Your Pet Day: 14

Popcorn Day: 19

National Pie Day: 23

Dental Drill Appreciation Day: 26

Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day: 30

So there you have it, a few dental marketing ideas for January. Please be sure to comment below with any other ideas or reminders you have for the month of January. I LOVE hearing from you!

If you have not yet subscribed to receive my Free Dental Marketing Ideas each month, please do so today.

October is the start of your fourth quarter for the year. It’s your opportunity to make it your best fourth quarter ever. To help you plan for that, today I’m sharing several ideas with you. Ideas that when implemented will keep things fresh and fun in your office. More importantly, they will exceed your patients and potential patients expectations which will allow you to focus on doing what you do best, helping your patients achieve healthy and beautiful smiles. Why? Because exceeding your patients’ expectations will help keep them loyal to your office.

Here are some fun ideas for October – I know a lot of offices are focusing on Candy Buy Back events so I will share some ideas for those events and some other ideas just in case you’re looking for something a little extra to exceed patient expectations.

Candy Buy Back:

Options:

Collect candy in office. Open to the Public

Or you can do this,

Team up w/local school(s) and set up collection bins in each classroom where the kids can bring in their candy and the classroom with the most candy wins a gift card or get a local pizzeria to donate pizza for a classroom pizza party for the winning classroom.

If you desire more help with a candy buy back event for your office, please contact me at bhaydenconsulting@gmail.com for a consultation. I have had the privilege of creating & implementing candy buy back events from start to finish.

National Orthodontic Health Month~ Use this as an opportunity to promote Invisalign. This time of year people are thinking about gift ideas and want to get their smile camera-ready for the holiday parties.

I hope you enjoyed these ideas. If you would like additional help to implement any of the ideas that I shared with you today or would like more ideas, please contact me today.

It is my wish that you all have a wonderful October!

If you do not already subscribe to receive our free dental marketing and practice management ideas right to your inbox each month, please do so today. Feel free to tell your dental friends about Hayden Consulting. ~Thank you!

Holes in the dental hygiene schedule, why do we dread this so much? Because, unfilled appointments, canceled or missed appointments all kill profitability.

So what do you do? You probably are desperate for a quick fix to fill the holes in the schedule. Right? Well, I’ll help you out by sharing some ideas to fill the hygiene schedule as a quick fix. However, I must say a quick fix is typically only a temporary fix. If holes in the schedule are becoming the norm around your office you need something more than a quick fix to figure out why this is happening and work to prevent your hygiene schedule from looking like Swiss cheese every week. Please email me at bhaydenconsulting@gmail.com or comment here if this is becoming an issue with your schedule. I can help you prevent these holes from happening.

On to the ideas for a quick (temporary) fix:

Note: If at all possible, try to avoid moving patients appointments around to fill in gaps. It can aggravate the patient. It’s always best to keep their appointment as scheduled.

Also, this isn’t the time to point fingers or start blaming someone for having holes in the schedule. Work together, as a team to fill these holes. Ideally, the hygienist should be involved in making these calls to patients, etc. Patients are more likely to respond when it’s their beloved hygienist calling them. Besides, the hygienist(s) are obviously the one(s) with the extra time. So the ideas I share are directed to the hygiene department with the goal of them becoming productive, happy and profitable. (Again, you will want to at a later date, work together as a team to determine why this is happening and create solutions to repair the breakdown.)

Call List – Do you have any patients that would like to come in at an earlier date for their hygiene appointment? Call them and let them know you have a rare unexpected change in the schedule and can see them sooner.

Cancellation/Missed Appt List – Do you have any patients on these lists that can be called?

Family Members – Check for other family members due for their hygiene appt. Is there someone coming in with hygiene that has family members that are also due in hygiene that may want to take one of those open slots.

Doctors Schedule – Check the doctors schedule for any patients that may be due for their hygiene appt and are coming in around the time that needs to be filled in hygiene. Invite them to take care of their hygiene appointment at the same time.

Incentives – Offer an Incentive for accepting a last-minute appointment. For example, complimentary fluoride, teeth whitening, small gift or gift card. Use your social media platforms to advertise this awesome today (or tomorrow) only opportunity.

Continuing care/past-due List – Get on the phone and with an enthusiastic and positive tone make some calls to your patients that are due or past due in hygiene. (Vary the times you make these calls. You’ll reach more patients this way.)

Spend more time with your patients. If you have open time that couldn’t be filled, take this opportunity to discuss better home care tools, update their information and medical history, do some perio charting, talk about cosmetic services, any recent continuing education courses, place sealants, apply desensitizing agent to any sensitive teeth, take impressions for whitening trays, review incomplete treatment with them, ask them if they’ll kindly leave a review on Google, Facebook or Yelp, mention how dental gift certificates make great gifts, etc.

Just a reminder before making any calls, it would be a good idea to check your patient’s account balance, insurance benefits and review their clinical notes. Also, be sure to document all calls, conversations, and correspondence made to or with the patient.

If the holes in your schedule are a few weeks out you can try these ideas:

Special Offers – Focus on a particular service or group of patients to target with special offers or prizes on a day that has a lot of holes. For example, Mouthguards / Teeth Whitening / Sealants / Desensitizing Agents / Back to School / Kids day / Senior day.

Fun Themed days – Superhero, Luau, BBQ, Disney, Sports, etc.

Despite your best efforts to fill the schedule, you may still end up with some holes that just couldn’t be filled. That’s alright, there is plenty to do to remain productive during this time.

I hope these ideas provide you with a quick fix to fill those holes in your schedule. Let me know how they work for you.

If you are not yet receiving my free dental marketing ideas every month to your email inbox, PLEASE take a second and subscribe today. This way, you won’t miss a single idea. Feel free to share my blog with your dental friends. ~ Thank you!

“Never yet was a springtime, when the buds forgot to bloom.”
~Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Spring is such a great time of year. I love seeing the trees bloom and the perennials sprouting in my flower beds. It’s also a time for me to get a lot of spring house cleaning/organizing accomplished and fun summer activities planned before our children are on their summer vacation from school.

Spring can be a great time for your dental office too! It’s a wonderful time to really look at the office through the eyes of your patients and potential patients and make any needed improvements. This article, Tips to Improve your Dental Office -First Impressions has many ideas to help get you started.

As promised, here are some dental marketing ideas for the month of May. Last week, I shared some dental marketing ideas to be used during the month of May’s Teacher Appreciation and Nurses week. If you missed it, you can read about them here.

Gifts from the Garden Month –

Host a Spring Perennial Plant Exchange at your office. What a fantastic way to meet your neighbors! (It would be awesome to turn this into a “Beautify & Clean-Up” Local Businesses in the Community Event.)

If you are interested in having me help your office create a custom “Garden Month” (or different themed) campaign that includes ideas for special offers, patient give-aways/drawings, community involvement, cross marketing with local businesses and recare/incomplete treatment scripting, please contact me today at bhaydenconsulting@gmail.com

National Pet Month –People love to talk and brag about their pets. Use this week to ask your friends/patients on your social media sites to post pictures of their pets. Post pictures of your team members pets. Turn it into a contest: the pet with the most likes wins a special treat.

High Blood Pressure Education Month – Why do we take your blood pressure at your dental appointment? High blood pressure is called the silent killer because, although it contributes to such potential killers as stroke and heart attack, those who suffer from it often have no signs or symptoms.

Many people see their dentist more regularly than a physician and could get an early warning about high blood pressure when getting their teeth cleaned or having other dental treatment done. We take your blood pressure because we care about you.

Family Practice & Pediatric Office Marketing Ideas:

National Family Wellness Month –

Target: Families

Product Feature: Cleanings, Sealants, Mouthguards & Fluoride

May Practice Management Reminders:

Insurance/Hygiene Recare/Incomplete Treatment Reminder: Many insurance companies renew their maximum on June 1st. Pull a report of any patients due in hygiene or with incomplete treatment that have benefits remaining before their June renewal. Make Use it or Lose It calls & mail reminders.

If you have any other thoughts or ideas please feel free to comment below. Should you need any help with your May marketing campaign, please email Betty: bhaydenconsulting@gmail.com

Have you signed up to receive my complimentary dental marketing and practice management ideas that are sent right to your email inbox each month? If not, take a second and sign up. This way, you won’t miss a single idea! PLEASE, feel free to share my blog with your colleagues.

“Approach the New Year with resolve to find the opportunities hidden in each new day. ” ~ Michael Josephson

Hello Friends,

December is a great time to make your to-do list for any wanted and needed improvements to your office and to set your production, collection and new patient goals for the new year. Do include your team in this plan, ask them what their ideas are to make 2016 a more productive and happier year for all.

Have you been following my Improve Your Office posts? If not, check them out here: Improve Your Office

Do not delay, put down on paper all of your thoughts and plans to make 2016 a better year for you and your practice.

I would like to help, here are some dental practice management and marketing ideas for January.

Practice Management Ideas ~

Let’s start with your existing patients active and inactive…

Hygiene Continuing Care & Incomplete Treatment:

Insurance Maximums: Many of your patients dental insurance maximums renew on January 1. Phone your patients with a friendly reminder of their renewed benefits and make a reservation for them to come in for their hygiene visit or incomplete treatment with the doctor.

Inactive Patients: It doesn’t help anyone to have a file cabinet or computer full of inactive patients – Get them on the schedule. January is a great time to send We Miss You Reactivation Letters to your patients. For a sample letter visit this post: Reactivation Letter

Hygiene Patients: Are you pre-appointing hygiene visits? If not, January is a good time to make this a goal for the office. While you have the hygiene patient in office, schedule their next 3, 4 or 6 month visit. Avoid saying “would you like to schedule your next appointment?” Many will say no. Instead, say this: “Let’s go ahead and schedule your next visit.” Assume they want to schedule their next visit. By the way, your entire team needs to be on board with pre-appointing your patients. It can be done! 🙂

Thank God It’s Monday” Day: 4th – Are Mondays typically bad days in your office? Starting in January, change that pattern. These ideas may help you start liking Mondays: How To Love Monday

Next, we have few internal and external marketing ideas, some are educational and some are just for fun. Both are presented to exceed your patients expectations, help to create value for better dental health and get them talking about you to their friends, family members, co-workers and neighbors.

Marketing Ideas ~

I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore Day: 7th – This is a wonderful educational and marketing opportunity:
I’m not going to take my…”Crowded Teeth”,“Yellow Teeth”,“Bad Breath”,“Sensitive Teeth”,“Snoring”,“Headaches”, anymore! – Show your patients how you can help.

National Soup Month and Soup Swap Day – January 16th.
Try this:
– Team Building Opportunity: Each team member brings in a slow cooker of soup. Enjoy a nice lunch together.
– Swap soup recipes on your social media sites or in the office.
– Delicious idea for Winter: “Warm-Up Wednesday’s” Set up a slow cooker with soup or chili every Wednesday for your patients to enjoy. (Have recipe cards ready to share) Your patients will love the free food.

January 29th – National Puzzle Day – You can purchase puzzles at your local dollar store and give away to your patients as unexpected gifts. Tie a ribbon around the boxes and attach your business card or office information to it. Even if your patient doesn’t want the puzzle, they can give it away as a gift on your behalf to their friend, family member, co-worker or neighbor.

This one is my favorite idea for January…

National Hot Tea Month –

Educational & Service Opportunity:

Drinking teas such as green tea can be very good for one’s dental health.

Does Tooth Sensitivity hold some of your patient’s back from enjoying their favorite hot beverage? Show them how you can help relieve/eliminate tooth sensitivity. This will give a nice boost to your production too!

If you are interested in having me help your office create a custom “National Hot Tea Month” (or different themed) campaign that includes ideas for special offers, patient give-aways/drawings, community involvement, cross marketing with local businesses and recare/incomplete treatment scripting, please contact me today at bhaydenconsulting@gmail.com

“Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering ‘it will be happier’…” ~ Alfred Tennyson

So there you have it, a few dental marketing ideas for January. Please be sure to comment below with any other ideas or reminders you have for the month of January. I LOVE hearing from you!

If you have not yet subscribed to receive my Free Dental Marketing Ideas each month, please do so today.

Stay warm out there!

Yours for Greater Success,

~Betty

P.S. Why not go ahead and put down in writing all of your marketing and practice management plans for the entire first quarter? For sure start planning for February’s Children’s Dental Health month. For some idea’s check out my Dental Marketing Ideas for February and March.

I must apologize again for posting the marketing ideas so close to the new month. I promise to have October’s ideas to you early as there are many! I have been so busy spending time enjoying these summer months with our kids. I can’t believe they start back to school in two weeks as second & fourth graders! 😦

Speaking of Back-to School …

Dental Marketing Ideas for September

Sports Safety & Healthy Smiles

Feature Mouthguards ~ With football season starting, remind your team to ask parents about getting athletic mouthguards for their children who play sports. You could do promotional pricing for the month on mouthguards.

Another idea: Consider putting up a promo board in your reception area or a flyer on the table about tips for moms & dads when packing school lunches… Most kids don’t brush their teeth after lunch when they’re at school. Parents need to ensure that the foods in their kids’ lunch boxes aren’t promoting tooth decay. List for them healthy school snack/lunch foods & beverages. Also, list foods & beverages that they should avoid. This would also make a great board on your office Pinterest account.

Both the information about mouthguards and healthy school snacks/food make for great social media posts.

Here are 4 more ways to Help your Team and Patients

Smile in September!

September 13th – International Chocolate Day. Um, anything chocolate will do on this day. 🙂

September 19th – International Talk Like A Pirate Day. A good excuse to be silly in the office and on social media.

Self Improvement Month – Feature Cosmetic dentistry

Happy Cat Month – Invite your friends/patients on social media to post pictures of the cat(s). People love showing off and talking about their pets.

So there you have it, some fun marketing ideas for the month of September. Please, be sure to stay in touch with me and keep me updated on any of the ideas that you use and if you have some thoughts on how to take these suggestions to the next level or just ways to improve on them I want to hear from you!

If you would like me to work with your office to create a specific marketing campaign for the month of September or would like further ideas on how to implement the Sports Safety & Healthy Smiles campaign, please contact me today at bhaydenconsulting@gmail.com

As always, I wish you all a fantastic & productive month!

Looking ahead to October – Breast Cancer Awareness Month, National Apple Month, Halloween Candy Buy Back and more! Oh, and don’t forget October starts your final quarter so start now figuring out your production, collection and new patient goals for October, November & December. Remember to include your entire team in your plans!